Rich East Asians spur demand for wildlife parts-
Organized Crime Is Wiping out Wildlife, Report Finds. Science Daily.
More enforcement effort is badly needed. Of course, the U.S. appears to be going the opposite direction and quickly.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
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It’s amazing that there isn’t more enforcment in our rural areas. That’s more jobs and it’s a revenue source for local communities. A win/win.
It is a rare report that has any encouraging news from the wildlife front on a local, national, or global scale. This is another example.
Man builds new models of many items each year. Earth does not.
Extinction is forever!
These people need to be stopped. A message needs to be sent that people caught trafficing in wildlife parts will do serious time. Leakey in Africa instituted a shoot on sight policy for elephant poaching and poaching dramatically declined. The bigger problem is the Asian culture and the role of TCM. How do you convince selfish people who feel animals are here for their benefit and who feel no sense of responsibility for other species….
I recently read “Nature’s Keepers: On the Front Lines to Save Wildlife in America” by Michael Tobias. The book was published in 1998 but the information seemed as relevant as it is now. I highly recommend the book if you want to learn more about illegal wildlife smuggling and poaching and the desperate shortage of enforcemant.
Sadly, I was reading about this stuff in the Wall St. Journal 25 years ago, so it is hardly a new phenomenon. Huge trade then, even greater now that more Asians have more money, and of course the internet to more efficiently line up buyers and sellers. Then the more $$ the sellers have the more creative they can be in smuggling their goods. Does this description remind any of the drug business?
Enforcement of wildlife protection measures on a world-wide basis will always be a problem, since everything is for sale, including some who are charged with protecting wildlife who will just look the other way. The UN as a policeman in this area…is, uh, interesting, but likely not real effective in most countries from which the wildlife are taken. Yet one more world problem that begs for a real solution.
Other countries that suffer from the exotic pet-trade and poaching are stiffer on punishment of these individuals than the United States is. Look at Texas alone that has an abundance amount of exotic animals as pets.
The purchasing power of the chinese is sky-rocketing. The increasing wealth in that country, with a yuan that has, and will continue to appreciate doesn’t bode well for wildlife.
The market for old chinese art, artifacts, etc. has increased dramatically over the last few years, and most of the demand has been driven by the chinese themselves. A lot of those types of items that stayed in the country were lost or destroyed over the last hundred years.
Another interesting note on the increasing wealth of the Chinese: Macau revenue from gambling is now almost 5 times that of Las Vegas. Most of the gamblers there are Chinese.